Live from the gates of the AT&T Center!

The Spurs play the Denver Nuggets in Game 2 of their best-of-seven playoff series tonight, and as the mid-day sun beats down me, I’m on the outside looking in.

Specifically, I’m at the Lot 45 Gate, which is sealed off and clearly marked with “Towing Zone” and “No Loitering/No Trespassing/No Soliciting” signs. And, after today, I suspect there will be “No Rogue Blogging” signs here, too.

I’ve been here five minutes and I’ve had one passing SAPD cop give me the skunk eye. And a dude using the ol’ “I need bus money, sir!” line hit me up for pocket change.

As I gaze out onto the disgusting industrial blight — truck terminals, gas terminals, and places that sell battery terminals — I am glad that the AT&T Center has spawned the economic and retail Renaissance on the East Side that large, government-subsidized sporting venues always create.

I do not have tickets to the game. I do not have a press pass. I have not tried to make it to the “Will Call” window because, frankly, Will ain’t gonna call. I’m not getting in. That place is sealed off more tightly than the other side of the bed tonight if the Spurs don’t win, if you know what I mean.

The real reason I’m here

I come not to praise the Spurs, but rather bury the despicable Dallas Mavericks with mad hate. And, I had to post this picture, which I found on the Interwebs two days ago:

Self-humiliation: Self-immolation’s less flammable brother

The only thing squirrellier than that picture is … nothing. That is, without a doubt, the most humiliating image since the first caveman scratched out a drawing of a Joan Rivers on a cave wall.

Dirk Nowitzki appears to be riding Mark Cuban, which is a phrase you probably never expected (nor wanted) to read. Steve Nash, formerly of the Mavericks but now free of their clutches, looks like a young Jackie Earle Haley in a remake of a John Ford western.

Dallas: The Land We’d All Like To Forget

And it’s not like we need more reasons to laugh at the Mavericks. Based on their regular season record, Mark “Moe Howard” Cuban has assembled one of the greatest teams in NBA history. And yet, they got beat down like rented mules by the lowly Golden State Warriors in Game 1. Yes, the Spurs lost, but the teams are closer. Dallas got spanked.

Plus, Dallas is a joke of a city. From the Big Haired soccer moms of the ‘burbs to the Big Haired suits working downtown, the Metroplexuals are an unlikable bunch of wannabes and crybabies.

They live close to both Oklahoma and Arkansas. They booed Dwyane Wade when he humiliated the Mavericks in the NBA Finals last year. And they just lost their football team to Arlington.

The television show “Dallas” wasn’t a drama; it was a documentary.

Dallasoids — most of whom actually live in the burbs 50 miles from Dallas — sit in their McMansons and tend to their large manes of bleached hair. This pathetic gaggle of insecure, loud-mouthed, $30,000-a-year, credit card millionaires, spend their days staring blankly at each other, wondering when the Next Big Thing will come along so that they can hitch their wagon to it.

When the Spurs were the Chaparrals, the team played before empty seats in a cardboard arena in that cardboard town. The last game was played in front of fewer than 700 fans. Now, with the Mavericks winning, the Dallas bandwagon is full and ready to spill.

So tonight, after the Spurs have kicked the Nuggets in their collective junk, the real fun will begin. If Golden State beats Dallas again as convincingly as they did in the first game, that series will effectively be over.

And then the Dallas fans will turn on their beloved Mavericks and bail out of the bandwagon faster than a Highland Park debutante ripping through her trust fund.